Since its first edition, in 1964, Dixon and Godrich's Blues and Gospel Records has been dubbed 'the bible' for collectors of pre-war African-American music. It provides an exhaustive listing of all recordings made up to the end of 1943 in a distinctively African-American musical style, excluding those customarily classed as jazz (which are the subject of separate discographies). The book covers recordings made for the commercial market (whether issued at the time or not) and also recordings made for the Library of Congress Archive of Folk Song and similar bodies -- about 20,000 titles in all, by more than 3,000 artists. For each recording session, full details are given of: artist credit, accompaniment, place and date of recording, titles, issuing company and catalogue numbers, matrix numbers and alternate takes. There are also short accounts of the major 'race labels', which recorded blues and gospel material, and a complete list of field trips to the south by travelling recording units. Howard Rye has joined the original compilers for this thoroughly revised fourth edition. The scope has been enlarged by the addition of about 150 new artists, in addition to newly discovered recordings by other artists. Early cylinder recordings of gospel music, from the 1890s, are also included for the first time. Previous editions of this work were applauded for their completeness, accuracy, and reliability. This has now been enhanced by the addition of new information from record labels and from record company files, and by listening to a wide selection of titles, and detailed cross-checking.
Following several years of individual effort, John Godrich and Robert M.W. Dixon worked in very close co-operation from 1959, attempting to compile files of every blues and gospel record made in the period covered by this work. It seemed that previous efforts had often lacked completeness through an error of approach. If one begins with a list of artists, and then tries to list every record made by each artist ‹ through perusal of catalogues and disposal sheets ‹ there can never come a point at which one can know that a particular listing is complete. The majority of blues and gospel records were issued in (so-called) 'Race Series', consecutively numbered, where all but a very few records in each series belong to the distinctively African-American 'blues' and 'gospel' musical genres, or are of instrumental jazz. A brief account of these Race Series appears in the book. The authors began by attempting to assemble complete listings of all Race Series. To cover instances where Race Records were issued together with popular and hillbilly records in General Series the full General Series was listed in outline, and the Race issues in detail. In this way the authors were able to know what their 'blanks' were, and to instigate systematic searches to fill them. They were thus able to ensure a very high measure of completeness for the final alphabetical listing.
Eighteen months (September 1961 to March 1963) were spent in preparation of the first edition of this listing. Nine separate alphabetical lists were prepared, one for each of the major companies concerned (Decca, Victor/Bluebird, etc.). This scheme made for streamlining of compilation, and enabled exhaustive cross-checks for consistency, completeness, and so on, to be made fairly easily. These individual lists were checked by a panel of collectors, revised in the light of a number of suggestions and criticisms, and then collated into a single alphabetical list which was again attempted cross-checked for consistency, etc.
Subsequent editions benefitted from input from readers and further research in company files including a major contribution from John Cowley to the comprehensive coverage of the Library of Congress's recording activities.
The first edition was published by Brian A. L. Rust as Blues And Gospel Records 1902-1942, by Robert M.W. Dixon and John Godrich. There was an illicit pirated reprint of the first edition, published by Scholarly Press, Saint Clair Shores, Mich., U.S.A. This was issued in the 1970s after the publication of the second edition and sold for more than three times the price of the second edition. The second edition was published in Summer 1969 by Storyville Publications as Blues And Gospel Records 1902-1942, compiled by John Godrich and Robert M.W. Dixon. The third edition was published in October 1982, also by Storyville Publications, as Blues And Gospel Records 1902-1943, compiled by Robert M.W. Dixon and John Godrich.
The first three editions were compiled by John Godrich and Robert M.W. Dixon alone, on the basis of the files they had jointly assembled. John Godrich took the major editorial responsibility for the first two editions but after 1970 his activities became curtailed through poor health and Robert M.W. Dixon assumed the major responsibility for the third edition. This was typeset for Storyville Publications by Howard Rye, whose suggestions and input were so great that he became, de facto, an additional compiler. For the fourth edition, Dixon and Godrich invited him to join them officially as third compiler.
The compilers come from a mixture of backgrounds. Robert M.W. Dixon is Director of the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology at the Australian National University; he has done original field research on the indigenous languages of Australia, Fiji and Amazonia besides writing A New Approach To English Grammar, on Semantic Principles (Clarendon Press, 1991). The late John Godrich was in the Merchant Navy and then worked as a clerk at Swansea Docks. Howard Rye, who like Dixon is an Oxford graduate, is an independent scholar on jazz and blues; he is principal researcher for the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz and is a regular contributor to jazz and blues publications. From 1980 to 1995, he was editor of Collectors Items.
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